Haskins Publications

Number	502
Year	1985
Drawer	9
Entry Date	11/19/1999
Authors	Munhall, K. G., Ostry, D. J., & Parush, A.
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Publication	Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 11, 457-474.
url	http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL0502.pdf
Abstract	Two experiments, in which the authors served as subjects, investigated the control of individual speech gestures by examining laryngeal and tongue movements during vowel and consonant production. A number of linguistic manipulations known to alter the durational characteristics of speech (speech rate, lexical stress, and phonemic identity) were tested. In all cases, a consistent pattern was observed in the kinematics of the laryngeal and tongue gestures. The ratio of maximum instantaneous velocity to movement amplitude, a kinematic index of mass-normalized stiffness, increased systematically as movement duration decreased. Specifically, the ratio of maximum velocity to movement amplitude varied as a function of a parameter serving as an index of velocity profile shape times the reciprocal of movement duration. The conformity of the data to this relation indicates that durational change was accomplished by scalar adjustment of a base velocity form. Findings are consistent with the idea that kinematic change is produced by the specification of articulator stiffness.
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